Wednesday morning I drove to work with no Metra stuff installed, and had no glitches with the body control module. I installed the reflashed Metra boxes after work then drove for 2 days, and had BCM glitches again. Not as bad as Tuesday, but enought to bother me. I thought of 2 things I can do.

First I have a second Metra heater buttons box I can swap out, and for the Onstar / Steering Wheel box, since I cannot replace it without buying a complete $300 kit, I can try to change it's operation by re-connecting all the stock amplifier and the one remaining stock speaker.. The center channel. This might satisfy the automatic sensing of amplifier present that is done, and should give me back onstar, seatbelt, and door chimes.

Also I can try reversing the steering wheel interface wires, which are supposed to be polarity irrevelavent to the Joycon, maybe they ARE to the Metra box, as one of the glitches I had locked up the Joycon when pressing and holding the steering wheel volume control

Yes, I'll try no steering wheel interface and see. I can still use the resistive button board I got from Joycon for now.

I had already gone through 9 emails with Metra, and in the end their take is Buy another $300 kit, we don't sell spare parts for the kits. I have already have bought 2 of these kits so far, if I buy anything else, it's going to be the Scosche kit, at least it will be somewhat different than a tried and true guarantee to fail within a week of warantee expiration.

I was hearing some kind of speaker buzz, when the amps were off, and decided that something in the stock amp must be contributing to the noise. I decided that I will take the door speakers off the factory Molex feedthrough, and drill and wire directly from the amps to the speakers. All soldered connections too, because those spade lugh connections can vibrate loose over time. It happened on my last camaro, and I had to take the door off, then pinch the spade tighter.

Found a place to drill for door speaker wire passthrough. The wires don't get pinched, but I had to drill through 2 layers of metal, and could only get 1 grommet on:

I had to wrap electrical tape around 6 inches of the wire on the door jam side of the wire, then fish it through. It wedged inside the grommet pretty tight, and the tape is thick where the wire contacts the inner metal panel, about 1/4 inch back. The exit side is smooth, but I am going to find a bigger grommet for the oval pass through. I could also seal the holes with RTV, but I want to wait a year and see how robust the flexing of this wire is over time, and replace it if necessary.

While I had the door apart, I decided I woud do a little pimpage. I decided I wanted LED Speaker Glow Rings. I drew up some rings in Corel Draw for maximum material utilization, which meant the rings had to be drawn into 1/3 ring pieces.

Next I laser cut the ring parts out of .011" cast acrylic. The laser cut this material in under 5 minutes.

Here are the parts to do the job. 5mm Aqua Green LED's, 470 ohm resistors, the acrylic parts, and I used 18awg zip cord:

I glued the bottom layer together, then glued the top layer on, rotated 60 degrees to overlap the splices, while aligning the LED holes. Next I sanded the rings to frost them and diffuse the light:

I pressed the LED's onto the slots, and soldered a 470 ohm resistor to each LED's positive lead. Wired in parallel, then tested OK with a 9v battery:

I glued the LED ring inside the door panel speaker grill area with contact cement. It was a snug fit, and contact cement is kind of rubbery so it should not vibrate out. I spliced into the Ambient Lighting connector, soldered, taped, and ty-wrapped. Tested operational:

After putting everything back together, I tested the glow, and it is slightly visible in daylight. Will check it out tonight and see how I like it. If too bright, I will add another 470 ohm resistor in series with 1 leg of the power wire. Right now I calculate that at 15 volts and 470 ohms, I am driving them at 31 milliamps. At 12 volts that goes down to 25 mA and adding another resistor will bring them down to 12-15mA each.